Skepticism

EVENTS

Some things never change

Zeno has posted the complete text of a long creationist screed published in the Sacramento Bee. It’s got everything: the second law of thermodynamics, the fallacy of the excluded middle, the ‘law’ of biogenesis, mysterious barriers between species, and of course, the Imminent Death of Darwinism. It’s tediously familiar, and you’ve probably heard it all many times before. Only two things make it interesting.

It was published in 1981, and it’s mostly indistinguishable from creationist rhetoric in 2009. Which is rather depressing, if you think about it.

The author is someone who also defends geocentrism. The creationists have mostly given that one up, so there are some signs of progress.

First, within its own very restricted area, science is a valuable tool In the search for truth, but outside this area, science becomes a distorted, subjective and misapplied thing, no longer true science at all and in great danger of generating philosophical and religious opposition. Not everything that scientists think, say and do is science.

Change a few things, and you’ve got a pretty good answer to Behe and his “science” there. Science is restricted, and does not utilize Behe’s essentially religious analogical “method.”

Still, you see some of the great divide between pseudo-scientific tripe like ID and parts of hard-core creationism. Science is understood to be the enemy of “Bible truth” by many of the latter (they’ll use it otherwise, however), but not by the IDiots–and some other of the Biblical literalists. True, they have to distort it before they like it, yet they likely do think that they’re just saving science from Darwin.

The author is someone who also defends geocentrism. The creationists have mostly given that one up, so there are some signs of progress.

No way. 20% of the US population are Geocentrists. 26% of the xian fundies are Geocentrists.

C’mon it has only been 500 years since Copernicus. We have robots on Mars and space probes orbiting Saturn. You can’t expect religious mythology to die out that easily.

Many fundies still believe the moon is a glow in the dark disk like it says in Genesis.

The flat earthers are almost gone though. There are still a few. According to Genesis, the earth is flat and the sky is a dome held up by pillars with the stars being lights stuck on it. It has doors so that god can dump water on us and kill almost everyone when he gets annoyed. No idea how many xians still buy that astronomy but there could be more than one can imagine.

First, within its own very restricted area, science is a valuable tool In the search for truth, but outside this area, science becomes a distorted, subjective and misapplied thing, no longer true science at all and in great danger of generating philosophical and religious opposition. Not everything that scientists think, say and do is science.

This is a beautiful example of fighting off cognitive dissonance. Saying that science is valuable “within it own very restricted area” allows them to benefit from all of the great things science has done for us, while still maintaining their anti-science positions. Medicine? The internet? Transportation? Science is great! Contradict my deeply cherished, wackaloon beliefs? Science is distorted, subjective, and misapplied!

And then there’s the canard that evo-devo isn’t “true science,” which lets them claim that, if guys like PZ could just get past their own prejudices and do some real science, everyone would realize that the Bible was right all along.

I will give him one point: no, not everything that scientists think, say, or do is science. On the other hand, nothing the creationists do is science, either.

No way. 20% of the US population are Geocentrists. 26% of the xian fundies are Geocentrists.

I have to believe that that’s simple ignorance; if you walked out the door and looked around, it would be pretty obvious that the sun was going around the earth. These people should know better, but I can believe that they somehow missed the message. Actually, it may have just been a bad poll question: if you threw up something that asked “does the sun goes around the earth every day?” I bet a lot of people would just carelessly check yes.

The evolution debate is another matter; creationists, at least the vocal ones, know about (something like) evolution, and know that rational people all accept it as true, but choose to believe something else anyway. It’s not just ignorance, it’s willful ignorance, a deliberate denial of the facts.

No way. 20% of the US population are Geocentrists. 26% of the xian fundies are Geocentrists.

I have to believe that that’s simple ignorance; if you walked out the door and looked around, it would be pretty obvious that the sun was going around the earth.

Some might be ignorance.

A lot of it is religious kookery. If you believe the earth is 6,000 years old, Noah had a boatload of dinosaurs, and evolution is impossible, then believing the sun orbits the earth is no big deal.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Some of those Geocentrists have advanced degrees, Ph.Ds and so on. According to the bible, the earth is the center of the universe. That means the earth is the center of the solar system, galaxy, and universe.

As a creationist, I believe, by faith, that the universe, the world, the earth and man came about by the purposeful action of a “clockmaker.” An evolutionist believes, also by faith, that matter by itself was able to make the uphill journey from molecules to man, without any clockmaker being required.

The problem here is that we’re using two different definitions of the word “faith.” If I was speaking casually, I might just say that I have “faith” in the scientific method, meaning that I have a certain measure of confidence in rationalism, empiricism, and the testing of hypotheses to produce useful, true information. This “faith” is essentially limited to the idea that the universe behaves in a logical, consistent manner.

Well, actually, this “faith” does have one more element: “faith” in human fallibility. We might be wrong, and that is why we are constantly examining the evidence and challenging our assumptions. That is why our body of knowledge is constantly growing, constantly improving.

But that isn’t the kind of faith Elmendof is talking about. He’s talking about Paul’s “faith,” the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” It isn’t a confidence in logic or reason or evidence, it’s a confidence despite the lack of these things, and even despite contradictory examples of the same. This faith starts out with a conclusion and holds on to it, no matter what, and that is why their positions and their arguments is so stagnant.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Some of those Geocentrists have advanced degrees, Ph.Ds and so on. According to the bible, the earth is the center of the universe. That means the earth is the center of the solar system, galaxy, and universe.

Sweet mother of mercy. I have never heard of a PhD arguing for geocentrism, and frankly, I can die a happy man without being exposed to that in person. Are these real PhDs, or “Dr. Dino” degrees?

“Scientism” — which is defined as what happens when science goes “beyond its proper domain” — is pretty much worthless in conversation unless people pin down exactly what they mean by it. This is hard to do with the religious/spiritual, because their stock-in-trade is the slide between superficial resemblances. If it makes sense to say that a scientist who claims to have scientifically proven that Beethoven is “better” than Bach is misapplying the concept of scientific method and investigation, then it should make equal sense to say that a scientist who says the earth is 4.5 billion years old is guilty of the same sort of “scientism.” What people consider possible to investigate objectively, and what they don’t, is a fluid dividing line.

The next accusation of scientism will come from a religionist who agrees that evolution is safely in science’s domain, but ghosts aren’t. Or ghosts are, but vitalism isn’t. Or vitalism is, but miracles aren’t. Or miracles are, but God isn’t. Or the-God-I-don’t-believe-in is, but not the vague God of impressive handwaving. And so on… till you get to something relatively non-controversial like saying you can’t scientifically defend one taste over another.

It’s particularly annoying when they act as if everyone is on the same page as they are, because we all agree ‘scientism’ is bad.

These and other insurmountable scientific barriers flatly preclude evolution happening by natural means in the here-and-now world, and that means that evolution can be said to have been scientifically disproven. This is an embarrassing predicament for evolution, and the problem has the best evolutionist brains in the country trying to find a way around, over, under or through these scientific laws to save evolution from disaster. But whether evolutionists like it or not, it’s all over for evolution’s claim to be “scientific.” There is then really no justification for creationists to compromise with evolution by propping it up to look alive in public school science classes with the two-model system.

This, I think, is an example of “over-charging.” District attorneys will sometimes (or often, depending on who you ask) charge a defendant with crimes that they know that can’t prove, and sometimes know that the defendant didn’t even commit, because it make the lesser charges seem more plausible. It’s an appeal to people’s innate desire to compromise. “Well, we can’t find him guilty of murder, so we’ll find him guilty of manslaughter, instead.”

Here, I think Elmendof is making a claim that he knows people won’t buy (“let’s throw evolution out of the classroom altogether”), so that people will compromise and accept what he actually wanted all along (“equal time for my religion in the science classroom”).

I have never heard of a PhD arguing for geocentrism, and frankly, I can die a happy man without being exposed to that in person. Are these real PhDs, or “Dr. Dino” degrees?

In some cases, real. Skeptic Magazine (I think) recently ran an article which looked at the religious and scientific beliefs of conservative Orthodox (Hassidic) jews. They’re an interesting case, because unlike many Christian Fundamentalists, they strongly value education and degrees from legitimate universities — but, like the Christian fundies, these Jewish fundies reject much of modern science. There was a rather surprising number with postgraduate degrees who even endorsed geocentrism.

As I recall, even more surprising was that those with science degrees were actually more likely to embrace geocentrism, than those with advanced degrees in other disciplines. It was as if the study of science had kick-started their conspiracy mentality into overdrive, because there was more direct conflict — and they were committed to keeping the religion pure. A Phd in Literature could perhaps afford to be sloppy on the strict dogmatic line in the science area, for not much was riding for him there, and not much expected.

It’s an interesting area of psychology. I wonder if most committed YEC would admit to drawing the line at geocentrism, and agree that they would throw out their religion, if this is what it lead to.

R.G. Elmendorf is a registered professional engineer and a graduate of Cornell University, who lives near Pittsburgh, Pa. Five years ago, he issued a $5,000 challenge to anyone who could show how evolution can operate in the same world as the second law of thermodynamics. He says he hasn’t paid off yet.

If this asshat can show me how the second law of thermodynamics and the biblical God can operate in the same world, I’ll pay him ten thousand dollars.

Sweet mother of mercy. I have never heard of a PhD arguing for geocentrism, and frankly, I can die a happy man without being exposed to that in person. Are these real PhDs, or “Dr. Dino” degrees?

Both. Most are probably diploma mill graduates.

Jeanson, the creationist who just graduated from Harvard with a Ph.D. and joined the ICR is a Geocentrist. He stated that the earth is the center of the universe, the dogma. The earth isn’t even the center of the solar system and is out towards the edge of the galaxy. The center of the galaxy is a very large black hole.

A lot of these are the usual, computer programmers and engineers. There are a lot more than you want to imagine. That 20% is 60 million Americans.

Creationists always try to use the second law,
to disprove evolution, but their theory has a flaw.
The second law is quite precise about where it applies,
only in a closed system must the entropy count rise.
The earth’s not a closed system’ it’s powered by the sun,
so fuck the damn creationists, Doomsday get my gun!

Err – it’s possible to get a Ph.D. in literature, art history, and even, yup, theology. So I don’t see any particular reason why there couldn’t be lots of religious fanatics with Ph.D.s, even from Harvard, which by the way has a divinity school.

I don’t think you can expect the Creationist creed to get any more advanced than where it has always been. It’s obvious they have been using all the same talking points for the last 30+ years because they cannot come up with any new research as is the case with science. When you base your “theories” off a 2,000 year old fictional book written by non scientists, and 30 year old ideas it kind of tends to leave these in a state of perpetual limbo.

I’m gonna have to agree with the below: I’m calling bullshit on raven until we see some link to the quoted stats.

Gee sandi, don’t you ever get tired of being a stupid religious kook? Probably not, being bored requires some mental ability to even realize you are bored.

For those who can’t quite believe how stupid religious fanatics are despite dealing with creationists and YECs, google works.

When I first saw those statistics, I didn’t believe them either. Then I looked them up.
They are real. Even more Americans think the earth is 6,000 years old, somewhere around 1/3 of the population.

Wikipedia Modern Geocentrism:

Modern geocentrists believe that they are the true standard-bearers for an appropriate integration of science and religion. In particular, Gerardus Bouw has claimed “Invariably, those [creationists] who do take more than a cursory look [at geocentricity] become geocentrists”. Many modern creationists disagree, including Ph.D. astronomers such as Danny Faulkner [3][5].[unreliable source?]

Morris Berman quotes survey results that show currently some 20% of the USA population believe that the sun goes around the Earth (geocentricism) rather than the Earth goes around the sun (heliocentricism), while a further 9% claimed not to know.[6]

“The problem here is that we’re using two different definitions of the word “faith.” ”

Yes your point is valid, but from retardation’s point of ignorance faith is what it is, the faith of believing in a 100 different things before breakfast loosely interconnected with a fairy story and at times interchangeable with ‘belief’.

They cannot understand science, simple like so!

They assume that folk espouse the scientific theory as a ‘belief/faith’ and because it is only a theory it must require faith to make it work…bit like their delusion… cogito ergo sum, or summat similar.

Religious victims are incapable of contemplating deeper then a ‘belief/faith’, it is all they know, when anyone contradicts their cozy little fairy story they can only assume that person has a different ‘belief/faith’ system, they are used to that in religio circles, they know other folk have different ‘beliefs/faiths’ but they do not understand that ‘belief/faith’ in a sky fairy can be actually non-existent, that would be scary and unheard of, so it must be a ‘belief/faith’ of something else, they know not the difference.

This is both fascinating and depressing. I see a lot of similarities between the stance Orthodox Jews take on education (dangerous, but necessary to earn a decent living) to he attitudes of a lot of the fundamentalist Christians I know.

According to their (small) survey, about 13% of the Orthodox Jews surveyed believed in geocentrism.

Strangely, about 73% were young-earth creationists, but about 41% believed that the dinosaurs existed millions of years before the humans. I wonder how the overlap deals with the fact that dinosaurs lived millions of years before the creation of the earth?

The rest of the article delves into the effects of education. Only 1 out of 50 science majors believed that human beings evolved from apes. Here’s the problem, though: if someone asked me that question, I’d usually say no, too. I wish the has asked if “human beings and apes evolved from a common ancestor.”

Only 1 out of 49 said that “evolution correctly explains the origin of life.” But, again, that may be a problem with how the question was put. We often say that “evolution explains the diversity of life, while abiogeneis explores the origin of life.”

84% of science majors were young-earth creationists, however, and that leads me to believe that the responses would have been the same even if the questions were more carefully worded. How depressing.

Religion is a lie and to function it needs to lie, no matter the evidence piled against it, religion must be true, cos they are in a mental pile of creamy batshit if it ain’t so, and the religion would cease to be simple like so!

gasp!…that might mean another religion might be true…(being not so shit hot on extrapolation like they is, except where a ambiguous sky daddy obviously means so and so and not so and so!)

It opens a ginormous rusty tin can of worms, best to disregard contra-evidence and make up your own, which they do and then some!

They assume that folk espouse the scientific theory as a ‘belief/faith’ and because it is only a theory it must require faith to make it work…bit like their delusion… cogito ergo sum, or summat similar.

I think there are two sides to that. A lot of “run of the mill” faithful, and a lot of people in general, have never spent much time or energy really studying something, or examining their own beliefs. There people probably think everyone is as lazy in their reasoning as they are.

When guys like Elmendof talk about “faith in science,” though, I think they’re simultaneously trying to bring scientific inquiry down to their level, and elevate their theology to the level of science. Basically, they want to seem humble and smart at the same time.

The problem here is that we’re using two different definitions of the word “faith.”

I usually address this particular canard with “conditional acceptance of that which we can observe (ie. science) is not the same as unconditional acceptance of that which we can’t (ie. religion), whether or not you use the same word to describe them both.”

One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn’t possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.

Surely putting myself in Comic Sans demonstrates that I’m being facetious here. Wouldn’t want anyone to take that seriously. But given what happened in a recent thread, here’s your disclaimer. Actually, the whole thing is quoted from something I believe was written by a poe.

“When guys like Elmendof talk about “faith in science,” though, I think they’re simultaneously trying to bring scientific inquiry down to their level, and elevate their theology to the level of science. Basically, they want to seem humble and smart at the same time.”

Absolutely…

They are gagging for a level playing field because they know damn full well they cannot compete on the actual level they whine from.

Hence the language they use in trying to get their delusion into science class, their holy grail made flesh so to speak.

‘Teach the controversy!’

Trying to give the impression to media and by default society that there are two competing bona fide ‘theories’ vying for supremacy.

And that suggests controversy in interpretation of the available evidence.

Equality by inference, same as their pretty little diplomas from the disgraceful degree mills they set up themselves, to confer a perceived equality in graduates, it might just fool their hard of thinking marks, that the bogus Phd so earned requires equality in educational standards.
You can tell the bogus ones, they tend to brag about their …ahem!…intellectual awards!

Tis all about trying to equalise the debate, problem is they have to lie and fabricate their platform from self manufactured scaffolding, and damnably creaky it be, so it is!

And coincidently hence the conflation of their ‘faith’ with their insistence on labelling the scientific process as a matter of ‘faith’

That they can handle, they know how other religions work cos they are a religion themselves, they understand the nuts and bolts of that pile of dog turd, but are incapable of wanting or being able to understand the process of scientific investigation.

They label it ‘Faith’ or ‘Belief’, because that is the dog whistle to their own posse, it is a handy metaphor, they can projectile vomit at will at the enemy then cos they think they know how it works….and project they do!

Evolution claims to be a self-caused, uphill process, but the principle of the second law of thermodynamics is that all processes are downhill.

As a result, nothing can be built, plants and animals cannot grow, and the universe is a 3K vacuum with a thin scattering of quarks spread evenly in a 6000 light year radius.

Worse than that. Humans are impossible. There is a theory that we all start out as a single celled zygote and then grow and develop in a womb into something called a baby. That baby develops into something called an adult.

However, the article you cite doesn’t seem to have that 26% (of the xian fundies being geocentrists) number. The 20% figure comes, say the Wikians, from an unspecified study in a Morris Berman book I don’t have to hand, so further follow-up is not possible tonight.

And my swiss-cheese memory is jabbering about some poll a few years back, taken over the phone, in which a few superstition-related questions got tacked on at the end because the researchers couldn’t afford a survey of their very own – one whose results were widely discounted once it was revealed the respondents were wrapping up an hour-plus ordeal and probably by then would’ve admitted to personally shooting Caesar. Could Berman have been citing that?

Raven:
Excellent analogy. I may borrow that sometime (with credit, of course).

Sure. This isn’t anything I made up though. It is an old point that probably doesn’t have an identifiable author.

Pierce, it is wikipedia. They don’t have everything. The 26% number comes from the original survey data. Gallup maybe??? who knows.

The numbers are believable. Even in European countries they still get 10% of the population as Geocentrists. You have to remember that half the population has an IQ less than 100. A lot of 70’s to 100 in there.

This isn’t anything I made up though. It is an old point that probably doesn’t have an identifiable author.

Ah. Well it’s a very good point and you’re the first person I have seen use it (I think). I’m grateful that I don’t get into discussions with creationists outside the internet very often. It happened once back in April, and it wasn’t very fun. It was a coworker and friend. The conversation went very rapidly from evolution to social darwinism to relativity to abiogenesis conservation of energy to relativity, with my hardly being able to get in a few words edgewise. The coworker refused to accept that there is supporting evidence for the effect of gravity on time (what would Einstein know, anyway?), and basically just refused to accept that just because he can’t understand something doesn’t mean other people can’t. He thought the conversation was enlightening, I thought it was like trying to nail Jell-O to a badger.

“Recognition that the “entropy of a physical system” is not meaningful without further qualifications is important in clarifying many questions concerning irreversibility and the second law. For example, I have been asked several times whether, in my opinion, a biological system, say a cat, which converts inanimate food into a highly organized structure and behavior, represents a violation of the second law. The answer I always give is that, until we specify the set of parameters which define the thermodynamic state of the cat, no definite question has been asked!”
E.T. Jaynes, “Gibbs vs. Boltzman Entropies. (1962)http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/gibbs.vs.boltzmann.pdf

The conversation went very rapidly from evolution to social darwinism to relativity to abiogenesis conservation of energy to relativity, with my hardly being able to get in a few words edgewise.

That is the Gish Gallop. We’ve all seen it.

As someone else stated, “It is almost impossible to turn a crackpot.”

We just have to make sure they don’t overrun our society. The fundies are just baggage being draggged along for the ride.

It sounds pathetic but all societies have baggage of one sort of another. So while we are dragging our baggage along, they are dragging theirs as well. If it wasn’t that way, we would be left behind in someone else’s dust.

What makes this eerie is a well known fact. All civilizations fall sooner or later. In my lifetime the British empire and the Soviet empire both imploded. I’m hoping our US civilization lasts for my existence and that no one lets the fundies carve it up with their knife.

What makes this eerie is a well known fact. All civilizations fall sooner or later. In my lifetime the British empire and the Soviet empire both imploded. I’m hoping our US civilization lasts for my existence and that no one lets the fundies carve it up with their knife.

I honestly think we’re in the last stages. There’s just so much wrong with our schools, our corporations, and our government to think that this whole lumbering beast of a country can continue on, and far too few people seem willing to make the changes necessary to salvage ourselves.

But, much like the British empire, I think that this is just going to result in a decline in our overall standing in the world. China will soon be (and, according to some, already is) challenging out status as the “only world superpower,” the Euro is or will replace the American Dollar as the currency of record. English may decline in popularity, etc. We’ll still be around, we just won’t be the big kid on the block anymore.

Which may or may not be a bad thing. I’d love to be on the “winning team,” so to speak, but not if the winning team is made up of creationists, climate change denialists, and the like.

The numbers are believable. Even in European countries they still get 10% of the population as Geocentrists. You have to remember that half the population has an IQ less than 100. A lot of 70’s to 100 in there.

I don’t think intelligence has much to do with it. One can be very stupid indeed and still learn to parrot commonly known facts.

Apart from religious commitments, I figure that a big factor is lack of attention, either in school, or when answering the poll.

(I’ve had a lot of conversations along the lines of “Did you X?”, “No, I did X” – presumably there’s a fair number of similar situations where they just say “no” …

I didn’t intend to use Einstein as an authority, but I see why it looks that way. I only meant to invoke him as further illustration that arguments from ignorance are flawed. Just because my former coworker doesn’t understand gravity doesn’t mean there haven’t been other people who understood it better.

Besides, he refused to allow the use of clocks to measure time in any sort of illustration, thus he dismissed the experiments involving atomic clocks at high altitudes. He would would just say that those clocks are flawed and don’t prove anything. Truly frustrating.

We’ve been talking about relativistic frames of reference over at Zeno’s blog, which is more mathematically oriented than this one. It’s all about choosing the frame of reference that makes computation the simplest. If we choose a geocentric model we can reformulate the laws of planetary motion in terms of this new center and then, with any luck, prove that the new laws are “irreducibly complex”.

It’s all about choosing the frame of reference that makes computation the simplest.

Indeed.

[anecdote]

I once wrote a program to do dart-scoring for a friend, where one could just click on a graphic of a dartboard as input. Determining where the click was seemed tricky, until I got the idea to use polar co-ordinates from the center¹; after that, the computations were trivial and the code much easier.

The Universe has no center because at the time of the Big Bang, it consisted of a single geometric point. So, all points in the Universe (that is, still in causal contact with eachother) are equivalent. Wrap your mind around that.

R.G. Elmendorf is a registered professional engineer and a graduate of Cornell University, who lives near Pittsburgh, Pa. Five years ago, he issued a $5,000 challenge to anyone who could show how evolution can operate in the same world as the second law of thermodynamics. He says he hasn’t paid off yet.

Is that offer still valid? If so, can someone send me his contact information? I could make good use indeed of 5 kilobucks…!

‘Hmmm’, retorted W. ‘and what would it look like if the Earth revolved around the Sun?’

Alright, can someone please explain to me, without straw manning, how thermodynamics has fuck-all to say about Evolution?

It doesn’t, yet idiot creationists want to say that because evolution requires an increase of information (and they say that is equal to energy) that it goes against 2LoT. They forget about closed systems and other things that make them look foolish.

Alright, can someone please explain to me, without straw manning, how thermodynamics has fuck-all to say about Evolution?

The misconception of entropy, that everything is heading towards disorder – so how could evolution make order?

At least that’s the thinking, even if it did affect in the way they wish it to then it is still no problem to evolution because of the DNA as the mechanism. Unfortunately as Dawkins* puts it, the dead hand of Plato means that people see perfect forms and degradation from such form. As opposed to seeing change in form over time where successful incarnations get passed on.

Linking to a 28-year old creationist rant and saying “look, the creationists never learn” isn’t exactly a water-tight argument. It’s obvious to those of us who follow these folks that they hardly ever come up with new arguments (I think irreducible complexity was that last halfway decent one), but this post, taken by itself, doesn’t really demonstrate the point.

It would be nice to link to a couple of more recent attempts by creationists to bring these arguments to bear. I’m sure there are many other examples.

Alright, can someone please explain to me, without straw manning, how thermodynamics has fuck-all to say about Evolution?

It doesn’t really. You can’t simply look at a process and say it violates the 2nd law. You need more than that, preferably some kind of measurement that shows a violation, or a really tight statistical argument that includes all necessary variables.

It does have relevance, though, in that organisms can’t violate the laws of thermodynamics any more than they can violate other laws of physics, so we will expect them to deal with this in the course of evolution. But, while this is true, it’s not really interesting until you apply it to specific species or biological processes where it can actually give insight.

The Universe has no center because at the time of the Big Bang, it consisted of a single geometric point. So, all points in the Universe (that is, still in causal contact with eachother) are equivalent. Wrap your mind around that.

Apt metaphor: Imagine a two dimensional universe. All points on the universe can be plotted on the surface of a baloon. As the baloon expands so does the distance between points*. However, there doesn’t need to be any center, as it were. Now imagine a three dimensional universe…ow. My brain broke.

*oooo…and notice how the further distant the points were from eachother, the more quickly they recede causing light waves to spread out into the red end of the spectrum.

Only 1 out of 50 science majors believed that human beings evolved from apes. Here’s the problem, though: if someone asked me that question, I’d usually say no, too. I wish the has asked if “human beings and apes evolved from a common ancestor.”

Humans did evolve from apes. Our last common ancestor with Pan and Gorilla was most certainly an “ape”. I would say humans evolved from apes. It’s simple truth. I would also say humans evolved from monkeys. The last common ancestor of humans and Papio hamadryas, the hamadryas baboon, was an animal we would call a monkey.

@82:
Depressingly enough, it seems to be easy to pull “professional engineers” to the dark side of cre*ti*nist boondoggery (not that there is another side)
It’s called the Salem hypothesis (and PZ, of course, has already been smack on it) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_hypothesis

In addition to the hypotheses listed, I wonder if a deeply ingrained disposition to tinkering predisposes “professional engineers” to believing in the Great Tinkerer in the Sky?

So many people seem to miss the point of the geocentrism argument, on both sides. Of course the sun can be said to go round the earth, or vice versa depending on the frame of reference. The xtian dogma was that everything; sun, planets, stars revolve around the earth. Plainly false.

In addition to the hypotheses listed, I wonder if a deeply ingrained disposition to tinkering predisposes “professional engineers” to believing in the Great Tinkerer in the Sky?

No, that’s not it. Or rather, any engineer that thinks like that is a really bad engineer. A good engineer can often look at a system that they don’t know, and ask themself ‘how would I go about building that?’, and as they are a good engineer, they come up with the right answer of how the system was built.

However, that only works for systems that are man-made. If you try to apply that trick to things that the natural world throws at us, you get an awful lot of WTF moments. Why is the human eye designed the way it is? Why do we suffer from auto-imune diseases? Quantum physics?!?! That is why we have scientists, to figure this stuff out, instead of just grabbing the nearest engineer and asking them how it’s done.

So, good engineers figure out very quickly that they can guess right for man made systems, and that they guess wrong for non-man made systems. Bad engineers on the other hand are regularly confronted with complex systems that they don’t understand, regardless of whether they are created by man or by nature. They aren’t able to tell the difference between the two, but they note the superficial similariy of great complexity between the two types of systems.

I add my 30% rule to the equation. That is that in general in the USA 30% of population is RWA in nature. Intelligence, professional accreditation, education, environment, and stunning counter argument has no bearing on their instilled beliefs.

They have a psychologically deep seated need to have authorities, dogma, and faith in their lives – and to passionately and unwaveringly support them intellectually and otherwise. They also need enemies to their stands on things (so they can wage “holy wars” – another need) and scapegoats (people and things that somehow muck up their view of truth and a perfect world).

Most standard walks of life have RWA members. Some walks of life have a greater share because that environment selects for them. Some have a lesser share for the same reason. But any standard walk can be contaminated at sometime and to some degree.

For instance – scientist paths are not ideal environments for them. But occasionally there are brilliant scientists with major cognitive dissonance between professional and non-professional lives. And there are those scientists that operate on a cult of personality within the field (to them all is erroneous if it violates their scientific dogma especially if its their guru’s scientific cult dogma – facts be damned).

Engineers and doctors have a greater share because those fields are more friendly to RWAs. They are more organized in thought and practice for one thing. And they have the facts more concretely (the handbooks) – that is it is a more black and white world – less discovery and more application. This is not to demean anything – or even say creativity does not exists there. But just that the environments of those fields are less precluding than say a career in theoretical science.

Obviously among PhD’s in Theology the proportion of RWAs will be much greater. But from the other side of the spectrum – even Theology is contaminated with non-RWAs. These non-RWAs are more prone to lose their faith and move to other fields and/or become essentially secular theologians that are in it for a variety of secular reasons good and bad.

I was about to storm in and protest all the hatin’ on engineers, but suddenly remembered an instance a few weeks ago, right after a lab experiment, when the instructor (an engineering grad student) recommended that my lab partner see an acupuncturist about her medical problems, and stated some bogus hand-waving reason why the effectiveness of acupuncture can’t be tested scientifically.
I know, this isn’t creationism, this is an completely unrelated form of epic fail, but it utterly deflated what was supposed to be my bold defence of engineers everywhere.

Just to be extremely anal, it is not always and automatically an appeal to authority if the authority being applealed to is an expert on the subject being discussed.

After having done some research, I will retract my statement. I have been laboring under the misconception that the Appeal to Authority Fallacy only counted case #2 from here ie. quoting a respected person that is not an expert in the field. It turns out that this particular instance qualified under case #1 from the same link ie. the authority is unnecessary, the evidence can be examined directly.

Yes, this is what I think distinquishes creationists from those who examine the evidence and think evolution is a fact. The creationist lacks imagination. Why else would anyone believe in Genesis which is on its face a simplistic origin myth?

but, I don’t have faith in the scientific method!
I don’t claim that science works without any proof of that. I know it, because science delivers the goods. (to borrow from Sagan)
It’s not a matter of irrational belief, but of certain knowledge.
One cannot focus a telescope upon God and know anything about him/her/it/them. One can focus a telescope upon Epsilon Eridani and discover things about that.